Читать книгу Three Tearless Histories - Erich Hackl - Страница 17

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LEO IS FIFTY-ONE, Fritzi fifty-two when they arrive in Brazil. Their sons are twenty-five and twenty. They have brought some effects with them from Vienna, linen, clothes, tableware, perhaps a few pieces of furniture and certainly a typewriter, which Leo bought in Vienna shortly before they left. Money? On Mitzi’s list of payments there is, apart from travel expenses of 5300 reichsmarks, which were entirely taken up by tickets for the ship and plane, passports and visas as well as carriage for their luggage, just one such item, from the day of their departure: Paid in cash to Klagsbrunn for the emigration costs for two relatives and travel money for the Klagsbrunn family: 2850.—Certainly none of that will be left by the time they reach Rio. However they manage to establish themselves professionally relatively quickly. Leo, presumably with the help of his brother-in-law, sets up a small firm—Lustra—making chemical products. Whether Fritzi works there too or brings in extra money from some other employment, is unknown. What we do know is that after the end of the war she is at home making aprons and other working clothes; Grete Gabmeier remembers that her aunt sometimes sends Frau Klagsbrunn material that is unobtainable in Brazil, or at least not of the same quality.

Their sons have to give up the idea of continuing their studies in Rio. After their long stay in Lisbon they can speak Portuguese reasonably well, so that they would have no problem following the lectures, but the exams they passed in Vienna are not recognized. They probably also find themselves forced to contribute to the family income as quickly as possible. Until he opens his first photographic studio Kurt, as he will later state, did “casual jobs” (the last in a travel agency). As early as April 1939, hardly a month after their arrival, Peter starts working as a sales representative for three local manufacturers of pharmaceutical products and perfumes, one after the other, then he sells essences used in making perfumes for a US firm. In 1942 he marries Ingeborg Röschen Steuer, who comes from a devout Jewish family.

Inge was the last of her family to escape from Germany. At twenty years old, four or five days before the outbreak of the Second World War. For practical reasons, in order to learn the language during the crossing, she had booked the journey on a Brazilian passenger ship that just managed to sail, while the regular Hamburg Süd liner was stuck in the harbor. Her father had had a delicatessen in Berlin-Tiergarten. Salo Steuer is a war veteran and was awarded the Iron Cross 1^st Class for his services to Kaiser and Fatherland. A friend of Inge’s just calls him—contemptuously—the Sergeant. On the sabbath he refuses to take the bus and does the long journey from their apartment in Ipanema to Botafogo and the synagogue of the Associãço Religiosa Israelita, founded by German Jews, on foot.

He is not happy that, of all people, his daughter has set her mind on the frail Peter Klagsbrunn, who is indifferent in matters of faith, and insists he undergoes a medical examination before the wedding. The doctor certifies that he has a weak heart. Inge marries him despite that. In 1944 she gives birth to a daughter, Vera, and two years later Victor is born. His father dies of a heart attack when he’s six, leaving his widow not much more than an apartment in Copacabana encumbered with mortgages and a Ford Anglia that has only just been purchased.

First of all the car is sold. Then lodgers are sought to whom she turns over three of the four rooms. Thirdly she starts to work as a representative for promotional articles. She’s hard-working, she doesn’t spare herself, her nerves are always on edge. She smokes a lot. During the hot season between New Year and Carnival, when hardly anyone in Rio does any work, she makes exhausting business trips to Belo Horizonte and Manaus. Although she has no lack of admirers, she will never have another long-term relationship. She wants the children to have a better life when they grow up. Therefore she sends Vera and Victor to the Colegio de Aplicaçao, a model public school that operates under the aegis of the Universidade do Brasil, but persuades her daughter to follow it by training as a secretary. Thus Vera’s desire to study law remains unfulfilled. Their mother wants Victor, however, to embark on an academic career. An attempt to have him instructed in the Jewish faith by the rabbi Dr. Lemle is torpedoed by Victor’s impudence. When Lemle sets his pupils an exercise to write down what they felt when they attended the synagogue, Victor’s response is one word: heat. He enjoys the laughter from the other children and is unmoved by the rabbi’s annoyance. At Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur, when he has to accompany his mother’s family to the synagogue or, before it was built, to the premises of the Botafogo Rowing and Football Club, which have been hired for the occasion, it really is unbearably hot and humid in the overfull rooms. Victor always finds some opportunity to slip out unnoticed into the fresh air. At the Colegio he is in danger of having to repeat a year because of an over-strict teacher. Driven by his fear of the worry this will cause his mother, he spends a whole summer boning up on math and, to his own surprise, ends up among the best in the class.